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Talk:Mike Pitcavage
Please revise this article to conceal his crimes, or at least leave warnings. In ordinary matters our policy is "Spoil away," but with something that HT deliberately tries to spin a mystery story around, we prefer not to give the solution away so easily. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:02, May 27, 2013 (UTC) I need to check the book again. I recall he taped a plastic bag over his head to asphyxiate but he might have taken an OD of sleeping pills too. I don't clearly recall the latter. ML4E (talk) 17:09, May 27, 2013 (UTC) for a plot twist, was there any reason this guy became serial killer? It seems left hanging.--Drgyen (talk) 20:19, December 6, 2013 (UTC) :After some reflection, I don't think there was any particular plot reason. The Supervolcano series doesn't really have much in the way of plot development. It seems to be a series of vignettes describing survival after the eruption. This particular twist seems to serve no other purpose than to surprise the reader. ML4E (talk) 17:19, December 7, 2013 (UTC) :Yeah, given the poor execution in story telling by HT, but still he should at least tell the motive for this corrupt cop: was it some past domestic abuse as a kid that fucked his head up? It is a "what happened to the mouse" that didn't tell us why this happened. If this is for plot twist, then I say HT is being a poor mystery writer or a real lazy writer doing for money.--Drgyen (talk) 20:32, December 7, 2013 (UTC) ::Mystery has never been his strong suit; even the Holmes pastiche was obvious as all hell, and certainly should not have required a Holmes analog to solve. I wish he'd stop trying to do mysteries, there's no shame in admitting a specific sort of story doesn't play to your strengths. ::He did do a very effective job at misdirecting the readers' attention in the matter of the killing of Tom Kennedy. Whether he actually built suspense around this mystery is pretty subjective, I guess; I was not extremely interested in the identity of Kennedy's killer, and was far more interested in other subplots of the GW series--almost all of them, in fact, with a few piddling exceptions like Bill Reach's harassment of Nellie and Moss's interest in then-superbitch Laura Secord. ::Of course, in his defense in this particular case--We don't always get a clear vision inside a serial killer's head. And Pitcavage wasn't that important a character, was he? It seems acceptable to shrug from an outside perspective at his unexpected behavior. At any rate, I don't see how learning a supporting character has a troubled past would add interest value to the story, not that it has much to begin with. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:17, December 7, 2013 (UTC) It's more due to the fact that HT had built a premise for Colin who had been looking after the killer for many years and only for HT to drop the proverbial bridge on him. If given anything from what you said about HT being suck at mystery genre, then HT is sending the message that he was going exactly nowhere with the "who's the killer" subplot and finally gave up.--Drgyen (talk) 17:04, December 9, 2013 (UTC) :I'll take your word for the jarring effect of the reveal. As I haven't read Supervolcano, I really couldn't say. It does strike me that a police chief-cum-serial killer would be uniquely situated to misdirect his subordinates in the murder investigation. :I might also wonder, though I don't seriously believe this is anything other than a stretch, if this might be a small Asimov homage. (I refer to the fact that Julius Enderby turned out to be the killer in The Caves of Steel.) Turtledove's admiration for Asimov is well known. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:26, December 10, 2013 (UTC) Even if he is making a shout to The Caves of Steel, HT is making a shoddy one of it. It feels empty-handed that Colin didn't caught him; the case is "solved" but the killer chose the "easy way out." This kind of revelation could have rocked and put the entire police force, including Colin, into absolute shame and embarrassment to have their boss and one of their own being the culprit in their midst for so freaking long.--Drgyen (talk) 09:20, December 11, 2013 (UTC) :Under ordinary circumstances, yes. But isn't the whole point to Supervolcano showing a society reduced to the basics by hardship? In such a setting I suspect most people wouldn't have much appetite for scandal. The serial killer is eliminated, and even if he weren't, even the most prolific serial killers hardly ever pose a statistically significant threat to the people of their community, so it's not the kind of danger people are looking to the police to protect them from anymore. Can Colin and the boys protect them from predatory scavengers and such? If so, they will continue to enjoy the public trust. If not, having had a serial killer as an ex-chief won't make a difference. :This is assuming that the grim and desperate society is properly realized, of course. From most of what I've read on this Wiki, it sounds like the series is mostly just our own society exaggerated in a somewhat more depressing direction. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:50, December 12, 2013 (UTC) I'm sticking to the idea that Turtledove have no fucking clue over how he was going with the story. He's old and got his hands full with many stories to sell, which I am blaming it over because of publishing demands and money.--Drgyen (talk) 02:37, June 1, 2014 (UTC) :You're problem seems to be that you think Turtledove should have approached the story following the conventions of the mystery genre, i.e. dogged flawed detective chases after a serial killer for years until he finally catches him, revealing some horrible secret reason why the killer is inflicting all of this horror on the world (usually because of his longlost connection to the detective). :Turtledove approached it more or less from a position of realism, which is how he approaches everything, for good and for ill. The truth is, serial killers are sad little people who kill because they want to and because they can, but most of the time they don't have any real reason for doing so. :When you look at the record, you see the fast majority are caught not be the amazing deductive reasoning of the officers pursuing them. Obviously, the officers have (hopefully) been diligent in collecting evidence, working up profiles of their suspect, interviewing witnesses and suspects. But the reality it, more often than not, these people are caught by sheer luck. Ted Bundy was caught on a traffic violation, as was Joel Rifkin, BTK decided to start writing letters again after a long silence, Gary Ridgway was finally caught because DNA collected from one of his murders matched DNA he submitted for a prostitution arrest, etc. :Turtledove's depiction of the investigation and capture of Pitcavage is realistic; a series of coincidences lead to the unmasking of a serial killer. It didn't make for the most exciting read; mystery really isn't Turtledove's strength, as stated. But I see nothing that leads me to believe he didn't know what to do with the story. This approach is consistent with how he writes everything. Reality doesn't always provide the answers we want, and Turtledove approaches his writing with that philosophy. TR (talk) 16:31, June 1, 2014 (UTC) "Realistic"? That's irony coming from a man who came up with the ideas of a surviving CSA turned Nazi-like, and aliens invading in WW2. Maybe you're right; I have been watching Law & Order as my favorite crime show; but Harry's way turned out boring for me in the end. But I get the feeling to believe that Harry got his hands full in writing door-stopping books just for bucks? Because I am overseeing that he is not comfortable with writing the kinds of books that he preferred to be just be done with it, and avoid having sequels.--Drgyen (talk) 20:26, June 1, 2014 (UTC) :He wants to show how human beings (and occasionally some other form of intelligence with enough human characteristics to be relatable) react to particular situations. Sometimes they're realistic situations, sometimes they're fantastic. In the latter case, sometimes they're set in a parallel fantasy world, other times the fantasy intrudes into our own. But in any event, apart from the one altered circumstance he's introducing, all other variables that go into human society remain constant. We may nitpick over details like having Shakespeare's father die too early, but that really is trivial in the end. Realism is maintained in all the important controlled variables. So it's "Imagine if the Yellowstone Supervolcano suddenly went off!" not "Imagine if the Yellowstone Supervolcano suddenly went off and, on an unrelated note, serial killers were also a lot more glamorous than they actually are!" That's what we mean by realism. :Remember that most of HT's books are classified (fairly or otherwise) as science fiction, and that is the standard of realism which most science fiction writers in all media strive for these days. Rory Williams may have been able to respond to the Statue of Liberty coming to life and feeding off his life force by figuring out how to create a temporal paradox that would kill her, but that doesn't mean he can walk past a gravestone with his name on it without reflexively doing a double take. :Now one can question why HT would make a mystery an important sub-plot when it plays to one of his weaknesses. And one can certainly question whether he maintained interest in the Supervolcano project. There's a reason I never did read those books, and it's the impression I get from this wiki that the series kind of peters out. I very much regret to say that I did read that damned Opening of the World series, and in coming up on five years I have yet to budge from what I consider to be a painfully obvious conclusion: He wrote himself into a corner, realized he had no idea how to wrap the story up, had a contract to fulfill and a deadline to meet, and deliberately wrote the worst conclusion he could imagine. You can take that as precedent if you want. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:55, June 2, 2014 (UTC) That's what I had been thinking about Harry, who is trying to create an entertaining story; interesting concepts, but don't know how to execute in the long run. The realism regarding the modern Collins family are not thst interesting and frankly put off because you have a ex-wife who is petty in her love life, and a bitching daughter. The whole crime subplot was to be getting somewhere to attract the readers but it came too "abrupt" as apparently Harry hit writer's block. So that is what turns me off - something that has building potential but went down hill. I blame the book companies (and other media industry) that is turning towards profits over creativity, and Harry is cowed to them as he is paid to do or he gets fired. --Drgyen (talk) 19:51, June 2, 2014 (UTC) :That sounds like a fair interpretation. Certainly I haven't seen anything about the Collins family on here that makes me think they're at all a likeable group of people, unlike some of the fictional families he's created in the past. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:36, June 3, 2014 (UTC)